Reflective Judgment and Taste

Abstract

The notion of reflective is introduced by Kant in response to a problem concerning the empirical heterogeneity of natural phenomena. In the light of this problem, reflective appears to consist primarily in the capacity for engaging in systematic natural science. But Kant also takes reflective to be exercised in judgments of taste: judgment, as a special faculty, must be regarded as comprising under it no other faculty than reflective judgment (XX, 248-9)1. Consequently, he takes the possibility of taste to rest on the same a priori principle which he takes to underlie empirical scientific enquiry: namely, the principle that nature is systematically organized in a way that conforms to, or in Kant's terms, is purposive for, our cognitive faculties. [Aesthetic judgment] . . . contains a principle which lays completely a priori at the basis of its reflection on nature, namely that of a formal purposiveness of nature in its empirical laws for our faculty of cognition (XX, 193). The connection that Kant draws between reflective and taste is important in understanding the role of Kant's theory of taste in the Critique of Judgment as a whole. But Kant's account of the connection has been criticized by several commentators as contrived or misleading (Marc-Wogau 1938, 34-40; Kulenkampff 1978, 32-56; Guyer 1979, 33-67). Specifically, Kant's view that aesthetic is based on the principle of the systematicity of nature has been rejected as a distortion of his theory of taste (Guyer 1979, 33-67). And more generally, the difficulties surrounding the connection have cast doubt on whether Kant's theory of taste stands in any more than a superficial relation to the rest of the Critique of Judgment (Beck 1969, 496-498).